Public Policy Network

February brings the familiar tradition of a pulling a groundhog from his borrow at dawn to see if his shadow appears, resulting in six more weeks of winter. His forecasting accuracy is a dismal 39 percent, but that doesn't stop crowds from braving frigid temperatures to witness the world-famous weather prognosticator's prediction each year.

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In addition to the historic nature of any presidential impeachment, this is the second time in U.S. history that an impeachment trial has occurred during a year the president was facing an election. In 1868, President Andrew Johnson was acquitted in the Senate by one vote, but later that year, he failed to receive his party's presidential nomination during a dramatic convention.

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A little over 200 years ago, American naval commander Oliver Hazard Perry claimed his victory over British forces in the Battle of Lake Erie by announcing, "We have met the enemy, and they are ours." Over a century later, noted cartoonist Walt Kelly, creator of the comic strip "Pogo," twisted the phrase to state, "We have met the enemy, and he is us." Kelly's first use of this phrase was to oppose the McCarthyism of the late 1940s and early 1950s, which led to the widespread branding of hundreds of Americans as communists, spies and subversives without any substantial evidence.

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It is not unusual for political discussions and family Thanksgiving dinners to include the proverbial "800-pound gorilla in the room." The gorilla often represents a taboo topic that no one wants to discuss. This year, the gorilla is the impeachment efforts focused on the president. All indications suggest this very large primate is settling in for an extended visit. It will soon be eating all the holiday leftovers and dominating the remote control. How many reruns of Animal Planet can anyone take?

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Many Americans have become numb or have tuned out Washington's nastiness and partisanship of the past few decades. Just when most probably thought things could not get worse, they got worse. And, partisanship in Washington will only get more intense with the House undertaking a series of investigations and considering the impeachment of the President. The last time Washington fought over the impeachment of a president (Bill Clinton), the party leading the effort suffered severe political losses. The time before that, the party defending the president (Richard Nixon) lost the next election.

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Forty million people pass through Washington D.C.'s Union Station annually. They are tourists, business travelers and working locals using intercity trains, regional commuter rail lines, Washington's subway system or intercity buses. That makes 80 million eyes noticing the many ads in Union Station competing for attention. These ads sell doughnuts, pretzels, hamburgers, clothes, watches and the like. Some ads are directed at congressional, federal agency, association, think tank and media staff that are members of the Washington policy workforce and regularly pass through Union Station. A deeper scan of the content of these ads can reveal hot policy issues. The total number and prominence of the ads also indicate the high financial stakes in some policy debates.

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